Net 24 Slashes Backup Window by Two-Thirds

A solution based on Tandberg Data’s StorageLibrary T40+ has slashed online backup, email services and virtual private server provider Net24 Limited’s own data backup time from over 24 hours to only eight hours. The company expects to achieve even faster backups after it makes software changes.

With data volumes growing at 30 per cent each year, Net 24, based in Christchurch, New Zealand, had sought to reduce its daily backup window to acceptable times

Managing Director Nikolai Schupbach says that for small to medium businesses (SMBs) to entrust their critical data to a company via the Internet requires a high degree of confidence in that company’s ability to store and retrieve that data in a 100 per cent fail-safe manner.

When Net 24 launched in 1999, customers’ data was backed up to DDS-3 tapes. “At that time we were backing up around 10GB of data. Now the daily volume backup data has soared to over 3.2TB and continues to increase every month,” says Nikolai.

Net 24 utilises Virtual Tape Library (VTL) technology to improve backup performance and reliability. VTLs use disk drives as storage, but operate exactly like a conventional tape library and therefore allow easy integration into any backup environment. “VTLs allow us to backup many systems simultaneously to fast disk systems, and we also benefit from fast restores. But VTLs do not replace physical tape libraries,” he says. "VTLs are part of our backup strategy – we copy everything from VTL to physical tape every day, but instead of removing the data from VTL immediately, we retain it for a short period of time which allows 99 per cent of restores to be performed from VTL. Physical tapes provide offline/offsite security of data, which is critical for disaster recovery. No VTL can provide that.”

Nikolai Schupbach recalls: “We were having problems copying large volumes of data from VTL to tape in a small backup window. It was taking more than 24 hours, which was unacceptable. To solve this problem we needed to run additional backup jobs simultaneously, which meant we also needed more physical tape drives. We required a tape library that could scale as our business expands and allow us to meet our shrinking backup window.”

Net24 sought one that would achieve the required speed and expandability, as well as handling multiple backup jobs running simultaneously.

“The Tandberg Data StorageLibrary T40+’s ability to add tape drives with a pass-through mode allows us to back up fast and add drives when required. Before, we were taking more than 24 hours to run the full backup. With the T40+ it takes eight hours and we are looking at reducing that time even further. Performance is not constrained by the tape library but by our backup software, which cannot send data to the drives fast enough.”

He added: “The new technology is working really well. Tandberg Data has a unique product – no other tape vendor I have seen offers a pass-through mode that allows stacking multiple tape libraries together into one virtual library – allowing tapes to be passed between physical libraries. When we need performance or space, we can simply buy another tape drive or library. Already it has enabled us to double both capacity and performance.”

At present Net24 uses one T40+ with two LTO-3 drives. With the current expansion rate they are looking to add another LTO-3 drive early next year. The pass-through feature allows five T40+ libraries to be stacked together utilising up to 20 physical tape drives and 123.2TB of capacity, giving Net24 expansion capabilities well into the foreseeable future. The new technology was supplied by Tandberg Data’s partner T-Data, and implemented by Net24. In six months of operation there have been no glitches or issues requiring support.

According to Nikolai, T-Data’s support team has been excellent with pricing and service. He says the new solution was easy to implement, requiring only to remove the old autoloader, plug in the T40+ and hook up to backup server, before getting security to recognise the new provider and going live.

He rates the Tandberg Data tape library highly for cost-effectiveness: “It was around the same price as others, but the ability to scale and expand as necessary made it far more cost effective. Other products would not allow us to scale – when we ran out of space, we would need to buy another library rather than a tape drive.”